Symptoms:

Hard drive spin problems are usually caused by installation errors, hardware failures, or power management activities.

• Drive motor does not spin at all. - When system is turned on, characteristic hard drive wind up sounds are not present. This can also occur if the hard drive spins down without cause after working for a period of time.
• Drive motor spins up and down. - This occurs during initial power up. The hard drive will start spinning, and then slow down again or it cycles up to a point and ceases to spin.
• Drive motor spins down following period of inactivity. - Hard drive fails to spin up when access is attempted.

Solution:

1. Installation Errors - Verify drive is installed properly
   • Check jumper settings on all hard drives attached to the same interface cable.
     1. For ATA drives, ensure Master, Slave, or Cable Select jumper settings
     2. For 3.0 Gbps SATA drives connected to a 1.5 Gbps SATA controller, ensure the force 1.5 Gbps speed jumper is in place.
     3. Check for Energy Management or deferred spin up jumpers. Most SCSI and some ATA and SATA hard drives contain one or both options. Seagate and Maxtor ATA hard drives do not have jumper settings for these jumpers.
   • Check power supply cable connections.
   • Check data cable connections.
   • Check for software that is enabling power management.
2. Power Management Issues - Check for presence of Green or Power Management features.
   • Disable Power Management in the BIOS/CMOS setup.
   • If applicable, disable power management jumper settings on the hard drive.
   • Windows 95 and Windows 98 can enable power management. This feature will need to be disabled.
3. Hardware Failures - Various components can cause spin problems.
   • Try installing drive in another system. This will verify the problem is with the drive, not the system.
   • Use a different power supply plug.
   • Use a different data cable.
   • Use a different controller card.
4. Communication Problems - Various data issues can result in a drive spinning down.
   • Perform hard drive diagnostics with SeaTools if this is an ATA or SATA drive, SeaTools Enterprise if this is a Seagate SCSI drive, or SCSIMax if this is a Maxtor or Quantum SCSI drive.